I've been working as the Social Media Editor and a staff writer at Forbes since October 2011. Prior to that, I worked as a freelance writer and contributor here. On this blog, I focus on futurism, cutting edge technology, and breaking research. Follow me on Twitter - @thealexknapp. You can email me at aknapp@forbes.com

Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who many political observers think has a strong shot to be a 2016 Presidential candidate, just finished a lengthy interview with GQ that you can read here. One thing that struck my interest here, as someone who often reports on science, was Rubio’s answer when he was asked the question, “How old do you think the Earth is.”

In response, Rubio told GQ that, “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

The emphasis in Rubio’s statement is mine. I say that because the age of the universe has a lot to do with how our economy is going to grow. That’s because large parts of the economy absolutely depend on scientists being right about either the age of the Universe or the laws of the Universe that allow scientists to determine its age. For example, astronomers recently discovered a galaxy that is over 13 billion light years away from Earth. That is, at its distance, it took the light from the Galaxy over 13 billion years to reach us.

Now, Marco Rubio’s Republican colleague Representative Paul Broun, who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology, recently stated that it was his belief that the Universe is only 9,000 years old. Well, if Broun is right and physicists are wrong, then we have a real problem. Virtually all modern technology relies on optics in some way, shape or form. And in the science of optics, the fact that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum is taken for granted. But the speed of light must not be constant if the universe is only 9,000 years old. It must be capable of being much, much faster. That means that the fundamental physics underlying the Internet, DVDs, laser surgery, and many many more critical parts of the economy are based on bad science. The consequences of that could be drastic, given our dependence on optics for our economic growth.

Here’s an even more disturbing thought – scientists currently believe that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old because radioactive substances decay at generally stable rates. Accordingly, by observing how much of a radioactive substance has decayed, scientists are able to determine how old that substance is. However, if the Earth is only 9,000 years old, then radioactive decay rates are unstable and subject to rapid acceleration under completely unknown circumstances. This poses an enormous danger to the country’s nuclear power plants, which could undergo an unanticipated meltdown at any time due to currently unpredictable circumstances. Likewise, accelerated decay could lead to the detonation of our nuclear weapons, and cause injuries and death to people undergoing radioactive treatments in hospitals. Any of these circumstances would obviously have a large economic impact.

If the Earth is really 9,000 years old, as Paul Broun believes and Rubio is willing to remain ignorant about, it becomes imperative to shut down our nuclear plants and dismantle our nuclear stockpiles now until such time as scientists are able to ascertain what circumstances exist that could cause deadly acceleration of radioactive decay and determine how to prevent it from happening.

The bottom line is that this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like. If the Earth is 9,000 years old, then virtually the entire construct of modern science is simply wrong. Not only that, most of the technology that we rely on most likely wouldn’t work – as they’re dependent on science that operates on the same physical laws that demonstrate the age of the universe.

Now, this doesn’t mean that our representatives to the Congress and to the Senate should be scientific experts. But if they hold ideas about the world around us that are fundamentally at odds with scientific evidence, then that will ultimately infringe on their ability to make reasoned judgments about a host of issues where the economy touches technology. And that could end up harming the economy as a whole.

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@Nathan Smith with due respect to your religious views i must add here that Charles Darwin was an Agnostic in the latter half of his life. He wrote in a letter to his friend, he considered it “absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist”. Further it was said the “Lady Hope Story”, published in 1915, claimed that Darwin had reverted to Christianity on his sickbed. The claims were repudiated by Darwin’s children and have been dismissed as false by historians.

Nathan, With regard to your statement, “If Rubio believes that the earth is 9000 years old, what is wrong with that? Is it dramatically affecting his ability to be a Senator? I highly doubt that it is.”

Presumably you had to read the article to extract the above quote. But my question is, Did you understand what you read?.

FYI The article appears to provide a reasonably rational and compelling argument that indeed Rubio’s beliefs would have a very high probability of achieving significant negative impacts on US society. Unless of course he is only an overpaid benchwarmer when it comes to his contributions to the House Committee on Science and Technology.

His beliefs are not benign. He is overtly dangerous, to you and everyone else in the country. Whether you know it, accept it, or not . . .

A few more details on the spread of the story and its subsequent rebuttal, taken from the book The Survival of Charles Darwin: a Biography of a Man and an Idea by Ronald W. Clark, published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985 (p. 199):

“Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: “How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done.” He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he “would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss.”

With Moody’s encouragement, Lady Hope’s story was printed in the Boston Watchman Examiner. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the Reformation Review and in the Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin’s story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. “I was present at his deathbed,” she wrote in the Christian for February 23, 1922. “Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever.” (Ellipsis is in the book)”

His point is clear… most politicians are religious nutjobs who’s judgement is clouded by their weekly brain washing like yourself! I believe! I believe! I believe! Now am I eligable to go to heaven to be with mommy and daddy or if I kill an infidell do I get 70 virgins in heaven. I used to thing religion was good for society but I’m yet to meet a religious person that isn’t a hipocrit.

“Darwin became a christian” is a rather ignorant statement. In fact, he was born into Christianity and never advocated raw atheism. In his senescence Darwin did lapse into a watered down version of his earlier brilliance, but Brett Favre isn’t half the man he used to be either.

Most right wingers, Rubio included, go by what the bible says. Of course common sense says that science makes more sense if you look at the whole picture. But here is the problem, religion is always based on fiction, & so is going to have conflicts from one religion to the next. The only way to solve this is to find the only truly omnipotent, beneficent god known to the universe, me. & go with her.

I say science is the truth. O.k. settled? See you in a few thousand years.

Alex is right. Ignorance and stupidity are never without a cost and having unqualified and illeterate politicians already has and will continue to have a real cost to the United States. People who believe that Santa Claus is real may have a use and a job somewhere, but not making decisions on the world’s largest economy.

And Americans wonder why its math and science scores are so low compared to those of other countries; its leaders still pathetically believe the earth to be 9000 years old. Mere 10 year old Chinese boys and girls would laugh at the prospect of dinosaur fossils being ruled as a test of faith. Oh, but not our senators.

I, personally, have never studied or verified the radioactive decay rate of the minerals around me; I leave that to the experts (as does our senator). I’ll defer to their opinions on the issue and spend my time dealing with issues where I have actual expertise.

You’ve taken this statement out of context, and for little constructive value.